To sweeten liberty:

Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever-new
And lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of inorn.

Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around 'em wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train!

Ah, shew them where in ambush stand

To seize their prey the murderous band!
Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind;

Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair,
Aud Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning infamy.

The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye,
That mocks the tear it force'd to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defil'd,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

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Lo, in the vale of years beneath A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death, More hideous than their Queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage:

Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan ;

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

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Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorauce is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

ELEGY

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Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 30 Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

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THE TRAVELLER

OR, A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY

[Publ. 1765]

TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH

DEAR SIR, -I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man, who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. Bat of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Music come in for a share. As these offer the feeble mind a less laborions entertainment, they at first rival Poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all that favour once shown to her, and, thongh but younger sisters, seize upon the elder's birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapests, and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say: for error is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous, I mean Party. Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what contrib

utes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man, after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire some half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet: his tawdry lampoons are called satires; his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire.

What reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse, to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show, that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from our own; that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge better than yourself how far these positions are illustrated in this poem. I am, dear sir, your most affectionate brother, OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;
Or onward, where the rude Corinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the

door;